s, resolve
to destroy their offspring, because they begin to set the Universe in
order. Tiamat, the female dragon, is more powerful than her husband
Apsu, who is slain by his son Ea. She summons to her aid the gods of
evil, and creates also a brood of monsters--serpents, dragons, vipers,
fish men, raging hounds, &c.--so as to bring about universal and
enduring confusion and evil. Not until she is destroyed can the
beneficent gods establish law and order and make the earth habitable
and beautiful.

But although Tiamat was slain, the everlasting battle between the
forces of good and evil was ever waged in the Babylonian world.
Certain evil spirits were let loose at certain periods, and they
strove to accomplish the destruction of mankind and his works. These
invisible enemies were either charmed away by performing magical
ceremonies, or by invoking the gods to thwart them and bind them.

Other spirits inhabited the bodies of animals and were ever hovering
near. The ghosts of the dead and male and female demons were birds,
like the birds of Fate which sang to Siegfried. When the owl raised
its melancholy voice in the darkness the listener heard the spirit of
a departed mother crying for her child. Ghosts and evil spirits
wandered through the streets in darkness; they haunted empty houses;
they fluttered through the evening air as bats; they hastened, moaning
dismally, across barren wastes searching for food or lay in wait for
travellers; they came as roaring lions and howling jackals, hungering
for human flesh. The "shedu" was a destructive bull which might slay
man wantonly or as a protector of temples. Of like character was the
"lamassu", depicted as a winged bull with human head, the protector of
palaces; the "alu" was a bull-like demon of tempest, and there were
also many composite, distorted, or formless monsters which were
vaguely termed "seizers" or "overthrowers", the Semitic "labashu" and
"ach-chazu", the Sumerian "dimmea" and "dimme-kur". A dialectic form
of "gallu" or devil was "mulla". Professor Pinches thinks it not
improbable that "mulla" may be connected with the word "mula", meaning
"star", and suggests that it referred to a "will-o'-the-wisp".[83] In
these islands, according to an old rhyme,

Some call him Robin Good-fellow,
Hob-goblin, or mad Crisp,
And some againe doe tearme him oft
By name of Will the Wisp.

Other names are "Kitty", "Peg", and "Jack with a lantern". "Poor
Robi